THE BIG DEBATE BURSTS BACK - WITH REDI TLHABI

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

The SABC has lifted the lid on its
TV licence collection shambles, telling parliament that it "cleaned up the
database", wrote off a staggering R17.7 billion in TV licence fees and that
South Africans are sending the SABC expletives telling the broadcaster to "Go …"

The SABC's acting CEO James Aguma revealed
that the SABC has written off over R17.7 billion in outstanding SABC TV licence
fees.

This staggering write-off comes after the
SABC started to try and clean up its records in which it listed dead people, kept
demanding exorbitant amounts from people who simply can't pay like old grannies,
and even issued licences to people living elsewhere in Africa.

James Aguma told parliament's portfolio committee
on communications that the SABC has been "cleaning up the database" since the
SABC had no idea who in the country are actually legitimate SABC TV licence
holders and who not.

"I took a look at the database. We also had
to get in consultants because we didn't have the capacity to do that," said
James Aguma.

"They discover that of the R23.8 billion the
[SABC TV licence] database was worth, about 1 million accounts adding up to R4
billion were either people who shouldn't have been added as licence holders,
deceased people and so on. So we cleaned up that database.”

"That meant that even the notices that were
being sent to people, were not accurate.” Aguma said he was told that "you are
still billing my dead relative". "We cleaned up that database and the figures
dropped from R23.8 billion to R6.1 billion".

Aguma said "400 000 accounts were
invalid". "We're saying: How does that happen? Either people were too lazy or
too negligent to do that job".

He said "SABC licence fees before the amount
was 'cleaned' R12.2 billion. Penalties was R11.6 billion. Bringing the total to
R23.8 billion. Now this is from a database that has no integrity."

"So we got a firm to go look at it, they then
went in and told us that if you want to clean up that data then you have to
write-off 1 million accounts. Some had prescribed, some were deceased, some are
foreign nationals."

"Someone from Malawi comes in and buys a TV
set and you say he owes you a licence but he doesn't even stay here. So all
that was listed in the database. So we are sitting with an amount of R6.1
billion."

Grannies owing
thousands in SABC licence fees

"Certain grannies had R15 000 owing – R9
000 in licences, R6 000 in penalties," said James Aguma. "How do you do
that? It just didn't make sense. We asked the department [of communications] to
write it off."

"We also noticed that in sending out the
notices to the public to pay, it was annoying. People would have married and
then we're sending them individual notices."

People also couldn't even pay in installments, said James Aguma.

"The response from the public then was very
aggressive. They would use expletives, telling us to 'Go elsewhere and so on'.
But we have cleaned that up and changed the approach."

About Me

is an independent TV critic, writer and journalist in South Africa as well as a pop culture and media expert.
He writes breaking news about TV for daily and weekly leading publications in the country and authors trend and analysis pieces about the TV business.In addition he writes regular weekly and monthly TV columns. He has and continues to write extensively about TV - chronicling what's on it and happening behind the scenes.